Why I resigned from WHUSIA

By Sean Whetstone Former committee member of WHUISA

I was planning to remain quiet over my resignation from West Ham United Independent Supporters Association (WHUISA) but since the association published the news on social media and own their website and that has since become a news article on KUMB.com I thought I would pen some words on the subject to put my side of the story.

I have been labelled as a controversial committee member with massive conflicts of interests because of my relationship with the board but in reality, I was often a lone voice and kept at arm’s length on a committee that is largely anti-board and not as democratic as they would like you to believe.

WHUISA was founded back in 2013 and I jointly chaired it along with Ali Worth in its original infancy until 2016 when I stepped down to let a new committee re-form the association to grow it to what it has become today.  I put myself up for election this earlier year to re-join the committee and I am reliably led to believe that I received the second largest number of votes in the election process.

Despite my democratic election to WHUISA, I remained an outsider, I had little idea what the association was up to and was excluded from most decision making processed or updates often learning more what was going on from social media than from the committee. Over the weekend we made one of our very few collective decisions on whether WHUISA should join the new West Ham United Supporters’ Board (WHUSB) before the deadline of this Wednesday. I strongly believed that WHUISA members should ultimately decide such a big decision but my suggestion was ignored and instead, the committee decided over a Whatsapp group.

Following the committee decision in which I was completely outvoted, WHUISA released a hasty statement effectively sticking two fingers up to the club and their new supporters board and saying they wanted to be no part of it.

Following that statement which I found embarrassing at best, my position became untenable as I felt I was banging my head against a brick wall and getting nowhere apart from a headache. I resigned on Sunday morning and have decided to work with organisations like the West Ham United Supporters’ Club (WHUSC) who are content to join the new WHUSB and work constructively with the club for benefit of their members.

I still believe in the concept of WHUISA but unfortunately, the sad truth is it fast becoming a protest group for anti-board minded supporters.